Digitizing Every Fish in the Sea

Adam Summers, professor of comparative biomechanics at the University of Washington, has begun developing an open source data set of 3-D skeletal maps of fish to make it easier for researchers to study fish specimens without having to resort to using 2-D images, which provide less detail, or physical specimens, which can be fragile and inaccessible. With this data, which Summers has made available via the Open Science Framework, an open source research data sharing platform, scientists are free to create large reproductions of skeletal structures with a 3-D printer to support their research. Summers has uploaded 3-D scans of 40 species thus far and plans to expand the data set to include all 25,000 species of fish.